Baseball leaves South Carolina with losses to Radford and Pitt

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The Bison baseball team traveled to Spartanburg, S.C. on Feb. 22-24 for three exhibition games against Pittsburgh and Radford as part of the USC Upstate-Wofford Tournament. After a postponed game on Feb. 22, the Bison fell to the Radford Highlanders 9-1 on Feb. 23. In a doubleheader on Feb. 24, the Orange and Blue lost to Pitt and Radford, 8-2 and 17-4, respectively.

The team faced lousy weather, as there was a flurry of rainouts and delays over the weekend. The Bison were in a hole early as Radford plated three runs in the first. In the bottom half of the inning, the team was able to get the bases loaded with no outs after a single by outfielder JohnPaul Bell ’20 and a double by outfielder Chris Cannizzaro ’22 but failed to score the baserunners.

Radford doubled their score to make it 6-0 in the fourth before a rain delay stopped the game. When play resumed, Radford scored another insurance run in the fifth to put the game out of reach. The Bison’s lone run came when infielder Dominic Toso ’21 stole home in the eighth.

The Orange and Blue’s first game of the doubleheader on Feb. 24 was against Pitt, where the team once again lost the lead in the first inning. Working from behind and down three runs after one inning, the Orange and Blue were not able to score until the fourth when first baseman Miles Moore ’19 collected an RBI sac-fly and catcher Evan Klugerman ’19 earned an RBI single to bring the score to 4-2. Two runs would be all that the team would score as Pittsburgh capitalized, scoring four more to win 8-2.

“This weekend we got the opportunity to compete against some solid ball clubs down south in the warmer weather. We saw a lot of good things from our guys, along with some areas we need to sharpen up,” Moore said. “Each game presented a new form of adversity that we had to battle through, and moving forward we just have to keep making those in-game adjustments to whatever situation we find ourselves in.”

The final game of the tournament was not favorable to the Bison. It was a close ball game up until the fourth inning. RBI’s by Cannizzaro and Toso got the Orange and Blue going and tied the game at two-all heading into the top half of the fourth. Radford scored nine runs in the fourth to create an insurmountable lead for the Bison to contest. The team got two more runs from Toso and catcher Ben Smith ’21, but the Highlanders would score six more runs before the game was called in the seventh inning.

The team will compete next in its home-opener series against Niagara on March 1 – March 3 at Depew Field.